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You call it a technicality, countries like Canada define them as dead-to-rights goods. As for loopholes, sure, that's possible, but do companies really want to kick off players who lapse for a couple months and lower their playerbase for not paying 3 cents? Having other players run around in the server and keep it populated is worth more to them than that, that's the reason the free to play model is so successful. Again, this is CHEAP, cheaper than finding ways of evading it. The only thing that's cheaper is doing nothing at all, I'm trying to see if the law can slam that door shut.

Well, it just “seems” like a technicality to me, but I’m not a a lawyer. Not to mention, given that there are still free online only games even in Canada, I would imagine their legal teams for these companies would fight you on them being dead to rights. Not that I agree with them, but laws are usually not black and white.

As to the loopholes, I think my scenario might be more plausible than you think, but even if it isn’t, there are certainly other ways they could think of to get around a legal ruling that required them to fork over their part of the game when they shut down servers if they are so reluctant to now for whatever reason, if it really would be as cheap as you posit to not do so.

One problem you are probably going to have is that there are so many political and legal issues people are worried about right now due to the rise of the far-right—just yesterday they got back into the Spanish parliament for the first time since Franco—that they would see this sort of thing as low priority. Like, the effects of the environmental deregulation by the current U.S. administration are already pretty scary at this precarious point, so it’s easy to completely focus on things like that if you’re trying to reign in corporations.

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I don't care, there hasnt been a good video game since 2004. Gaming deserves to die

^^^ this.

I don't care if tomorrow the whole gaming industry just dies down. I have SO MANY games in my backlog that are GUARANTEED to be great, that they will be more than enough for me to play for my whole remaining life.

Also, right now the overwhelming majority of games that are worth my time are made by Slavs (most notably Poles), and they tend to despise restrictive DRM (need I remind you that GOG was created by CDPR?). And on the contrary, games that are prone to be turned into GaaS/streaming are Pachinko machines that I wouldn't even download from Torrents if I could.

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I was only talking about the "minimum effort" options to give users a fighting CHANCE to create a server emulator.

Ok, it's going to be a long one. I will go slightly out of order with your questions, just to make sure it's coherent[-ish]

Before all, I should clear some possible misunderstanding here. You are talking about legal enforcement, not some "gentlemen agreement" between fans and developers. And that means couple things:

Any proposed "minimal effort" should be enough so fans can "repair" the game legally. You can't make/interpret a law in such meaning that to repair the game an owner needs to break another law. Reverse-engineering is illegal and it holds in courts. So all those ideas "just give us encryption keys and we'll do the rest" imply reverse-engineering of the client, which won't hold in a court. License you get might be perpetual, but it's limited. It does not allow you to reverse-engineer the game. And developers will fight to the death against that - a loophole that will allow players to legally reverse-engineer the game is practically open-sourcing the code. And there will be legal problems with third-party.

You really don't want to go that direction - it's a whole new battle on top of the battle you already subscribed for. This battle is fought by open-source/information freedom activists for quite some time already.

And just a well, such a "minimal effort" should be enough so fans can "repair" the game exactly. Again, many of existing game emulators are "derived works" at best. And this is a copyright problem. And it will fail at court. Same thing - developers who ok with derived works are usually not the part of the problem at hand.

This is another battle you don't to be a part of - a battle of modding community.

With that in mind, you need a bit more than the guy you talked about proposes. How much depends on a game. But in total, if taken all together, that would be:

Protocol specification and communication logic

All the server-side data and game logic (at least in forms of design)

Now in detail about both

Protocol specification and communication

Game client-server communication (again, depends on the game) may be broken into three layers

Low-level. This is usually some sort of "Robust UDP" implementation for PC/Console games or some sort of REST/REST-alike http-based protocol. This is just a definition of overall structures and logic how packets are being resent if lost, acked, etc.

It usually also includes a definition on how things are being packed - server usually sends a single "packet" (as defined by the protocol - it might be many UDP packets) to the client containing all the data gathered through the server tick at the end of the tick. In some cases there could be some bandwidth limitation with protocol logic throwing out data that is considered less useful, there could be definition of data compression mechanics - like compressing position of a far-away entity from float3 (12 bytes) to single float (4 bytes) with loss of precision.

But in either case there is nothing specific to the game - it's just a set of rules and algorithms that are usually data-driven in some sort. In the most simplistic variants it would be quite trivial, in more stream-alike protocols it would be quite complex.

This is the easiest part - it's usually implemented via some sort of open-source third-party library, or not really anything "secret" or special. Aside of fear of embarrassment there is little preventing developers from even open-sourcing any in-house implementations. In fact most big publishers like EA already did that. Plus if it's some sort of crappy in-house implementation, it will most probably be of "simple" kind and even (which is quite probably) there is zero documentation, writing such documentation (if open-sourcing is unfeasible) won't take a lot of time.

Game core layer. This is definition of the messages - commands that client and server send to each other depicting certain events or actions required. Now how it's defined may vary wildly depending on low-level protocol, but usually it's some sort of ID for the message and message payload that is defined as set of fields. If low-level protocol does not define how fields are being packed, it might also include some sort of package mechanism that could be quite complex (something like google protobuf).

Some commands could be reliable, others are not - say MoveTo could be unreliable, i.e. if the package holding it was lost, it won't be resent in the next package. The reliability mechanism is defined by low-level protocol, but which messages or even individual fields are reliable, which fields are compressed in which way is defined by a message specification.

For older games that would be enough, because that's practically how server and client would talk to each other and notify about everything happening. For newer games there is a next layer. But for older games it might not be as easy as just defining a protocol or copying documentation (ha-ha-ha, documentation, ha)

Most games I've seen and worked on would have their messages being constructed with code like that

Quote

... write some fields ...
if version check
... write more fields ...
else
... write some fields and do some conversions ...

if some other bullshit check
... go back in written data and patch it, because we can ...

And I can 100% guarantee there is no documentation. Structure definitions/protobuf specifications is your best bet, but what inside those fields and what they are and where they are being written and how - that's something very non-trivial usually.

Your source probably comes from some business software background if he thinks there will be documentation, because 10 people ask. In most cases there will be 1 person who even touches that code and when it breaks everyone are seeking this guy. When Bungie left MS, Halo was given to new studio named 539 or something like that. I have a friend working for them - they have no idea how network works. If they'll need to publish something like that (they aren't gaas though) - it would be close to "rewrite everything network from scratch". Yes, it is that bad.

So this is going to be a problem, especially for games with lots of legacy. In some cases, like mentioned above Halo where they've basically lost all knowledge of that codebase - that may take months to re-construct the lost information AND it will take more months of actual support of fan team doing the emulator, because 146% you'll have mistakes while trying to reconstruct the protocol.

Communication logic. This is how the data in the messages are being interpreted by the client and compiled by the server.

For modern games that have significant use of ECS paradigm, network communication is usually no event/command-based, but model-based. Basically in most cases server-to-client communication consists of one major message "Update" that sends a data diff essentially.

And while it sounds even easier than above, it's not. Because in addition to the diff format itself, now you also need specification of the data that diff is being applied to - component specifications. And if they have good component design, it would be easy-ish - it's just structures. But I rarely seen good component design. In some of the worst cases that would be actual game-logic classes with all the quirks and non-network-related data.

Extracting just network related information from that is possible - but with same caveat as in 2. - it will take additional active support time, because you'll surely make mistakes here. And no, no documentation either.

In addition to newer games and ECS, even for older games there are various quirks like "character creation flow" (if you'll send inventory items before inventory itself, client will crash), deterministic algorithms (where data is assumed to be changed in exactly same way on both client and server, so you don't need to sync it as regularly - like time ticks, for instance) and other bits and bytes here.

And no, really, there is no documentation for that either. And there will be shitload of places that no one even knows about.

So, to summarize - for a game with anywhere complex network communication, writing down docs that would be enough to build a working server emulator without resorting to client reverse-engineering may easily amount to rewriting the server from scratch writing documentation while doing so, because it might be the only way to ensure that documentation you'll publish will actually work. And as we talk about law enforcement - if you publish something that doesn't work, then you might be sued for that and get fined. Most game network programmers when asked to define how the network works exactly and without mistakes so someone without their knowledge and access to the codebase can replicate the server - they'll just leave via the window.

I worked at Wargaming on their games (World of *) and I can tell you - for them it will be nigh impossible. They won't even try

All the server-side data and game logic (at least in forms of design)

So to create an exact copy you need to know how it works. And MMOs, especially big open-world ones, tend to have quite a significant amount of logic and data stored on the server. Speaking of projects I know about - Wargming's Wo* games are quite opposite of the scheme you've shown in the video. They have most of the logic and data in a server. Not on the client.

And any games working on BigWorld, Spacial OS. Games like upcoming Star Citizen. Well, practically any big MMO, especially without instances or with many people in an instance will have that problem. Client would have 3d models, textures, materials and some movement logic, but that's it. Most of actual game will be on a server.

So not only to "repair" the game fan team will have to basically write the whole game from scratch, they will also need an exact specification on how it worked gameplay-wise, because what players see in client might be a result of few complex mechanics working together behind the scenes. And all the data as well - all the balancing, item definitions, treasure tables, spawning formulas and whatnot.

Again, for games like Destiny, which is basically p2p Halo with small authoritative server controlling spawns and item generation, it will be quite trivial. For them it will be easier to just publish the server executables though.

For games like Revelation (I think? It's using BigWorld iirc) or Wargaming's games - yeah. You can forget about it. They won't open the code - because that will allow anyone do the same game without any effort, nor they will be able to define how the game works, because that's literally "write documentation about the whole game". No one knows how it works. Even if there are some design documentation it usually not up-to-date or complete.

Realistic (IMO) scenario

We must consider any effort required from a developer to comply with the law against effort required to bypass the law. Bypassing the law could easily be done by making the license non-perpetual. Say 4 month-long with automatic renewal each time you login. So they will have to announce 4 month in advance before shutting down servers that licenses are no longer automatically renewed and that's it.

So for:

Games with significant authoritative server (i.e. where most of game logic is on the server) that do not have some sort of private server as part of the package (like Star Citizen intend) - it's a lost battle. Either will have to publish too much (open-source) and that will create competition for them, or they will have to basically work alongside with the fan team providing them with support, explaining what is what and how it's done. Refund is also out of the question - they just don't have so much money, they've eaten all the money they've got. Epic only able to do that, because Paragon was never popular.

WoT goes into that category

Games with lots of legacy, put on support into other's hands like Halo (assuming they would go gaas) - huge effort needed, most probably no one will do that.

Games like Battlefield, Lawbreakers, etc - session-based shooters with what seems to be just a dedicated server running on a cloud, but most logic on a client - yes, it will be possible, but usually those games are killed if no one plays them (low community interest - no one will actually build the server) or are killed to avoid internal competition - here there will be either no one to ask from (company goes bankrupt) or they will avoid compliance because that's the whole point of killing the game - go buy new Battlefield!

So the only realistic variant is to have companies building new games from scratch or with active codebase building EOL into their games, usually in forms of patching out the server dependency (possible for games like Sim City, the RTS you've once shown on Game Dungeon, Starcraft 2, etc - where online-only is mostly just DRM feature). Maybe, if we are very lucky, "fake" MMOs like Destiny or Anthem. They probably even have private servers running inside the company already, so it won't be much of a problem for them to release it.

On 4/28/2019 at 6:20 PM, Ross Scott said:

The above is referring only to games that had no EOL plan to begin with. But say you were creating a game from the design phase where you knew you wanted an EOL plan upon shutdown so users would have some method to run the game upon shutdown. Assume it doesn't need to retain 100% functionality, so it may not contain things like auction houses, matchmaking, or being able to handle the same volume of players as a central server. Just as long as the player can technically run around in the game and get some of the bare bones playability from the game. How much extra work / budget do you estimate creating the EOL would take? Assume 2 different scenarios:

3a. A simple arena shooter like Nosgoth or Lawbreakers

3b. A moderately sized MMO like Firefall or Wildstar

It's simple actually. Say in WoT case except for being written in Python (hence they can't just release the server executable - it will be disassembled in no time) and having overly complex engine for the their use-case that can't be made easier (BigWorld is meant for big MMOs) - nothing really prevents them from having a dedicated server running locally. Example of that would be console version of WoT which is written on different engine and developers made a Windows-running small version of the server (and their logic is written in C++), which can be made public no problem.

Another good example is Star Citizen - they plan on releasing single-player to be-played-offline version of the game and they regularly show developers running local servers on their machines. This may change before the release (Elite: Dangerous was promising the same, but then bailed), but it's clear that in most cases during development programmers create some sort of dedicated servers anyway. If forced by law, they can just make those servers more production quality, limit them to number of players so they won't compete with any possible new version and that's it.

So in case of MMO, I don't think it will add much of an effort if considered from the very beginning and designed around. Even dedicated server won't be done from the get-go, I think in 2-4 month time, unless there are significant design issues (which is what "consider from the very beginning" part should ideally prevent) - it will be possible to make "private" server package that will be runnable by the players.

This is for MMOs, for arena shooters it will easily be "free". For other games - again, if considered and checked from the beginning, any connection to outside services could be designed to be stabbable/compiled without, so it won't take significant time or effort as well.

So technologically, if we consider a brand new game on a brand new code - it will be half-year in worst case, "free" in best case. A month on average case I think. But again - shooters will be more ok with that, MMOs will be very reluctant, because it will allow others to create similar mmos.

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Sorry not to respond to all your points, but this part below determines a lot of other things:

Quote

Any proposed "minimal effort" should be enough so fans can "repair" the game legally. You can't make/interpret a law in such meaning that to repair the game an owner needs to break another law. Reverse-engineering is illegal and it holds in courts. So all those ideas "just give us encryption keys and we'll do the rest" imply reverse-engineering of the client, which won't hold in a court.

Okay, see now, I'm confused. Wasn't that the purpose of the DMCA exemption created last year?

My understanding was the exemption of 1201 of the DMCA says it IS legal to reverse engineer a server of an online game for purposes of restoring the functionality of the purchased product. Care to clarify? This a really important point, and a lot of what you wrote afterwards hinges on how that is interpreted.

And to be clear, no, I'm not talking about FULL functionality. Hell, someone can run World of Warcraft on a server emulator right now, but it's not going to be technically FULL functionality with every last similarity. I would even argue that might be impossible for many MMOs. If the law leaves absolutely no provision for releasing a modified copy that's similar to the original product, you're right, there's no shortcut at all, nor is that even a feasible path in many cases. Is this really accurate though? It seems like every time a company updates a game, they're changing the terms of what the game is due to changes. I wouldn't think a scaled down emulated copy of the game would be any less an acceptable change.

Anyway, you're right in that this is essentially an unsolvable problem if FULL functionality is required to provide an enforceable solution for this. Definitely clarify that DMCA exemption though, we need to have that understood before we (or at least I) can discuss this more objectively.

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At this point I'd be fine with just being able to load the levels, and to just run around in the world. Something, anything. Anything beats nothing at all.

It sucks but, I don't think the AAA industry is going to give up so easily, but neither should we.

But to me this seems like too much of a compromise, I would prefer if lobotomizing games was also illegal, this practice needs to die 100%, anything less, and we might as well give up now at this point. If we can't get a fully functional game, what hopes do we have of getting a barely functional one?

Man I really hope people will figure this mess out, because I'm not very optimistic right now to be honest. I don't like this half assed approach, we shouldn't have to deal with these conditions, it's bullshit, I hate it.

Edited April 30 by RaTcHeT302

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And about that "minimal plan". I am a game engine programmer, so I know quite a bit about it. It's not that easy - there are third-party libs everyone are using that bound with license to the product. You can't just "release" the server in many cases - it's tied to client (code share) that uses those third-party libs, it's tied to platforms and SDKs that are usually under NDA.
...

2. Release server executable - that really depends on the game. For MMOs that's practically impossible, as MMO server is a conglomerate of executables and services with special configuration, usually heavily tied to the platform it runs on. So basically they will have to provide a hell lot of stuff that will only be able to be run by someone who have enough money to run it on commercial cloud platform. I.e. they will just give it to their competitors.

Another possibility I considered was not necessarily actually releasing the server binary, but just making it available for use. This theoretically might be easier for issues like 3rd-party libs.

Consider something like the AWS marketplace. Basically, you pay them money, and they start up a server running certain code in their datacenter. Or perhaps a whole network of servers, because more than once machine is required to do some job. As the customer, you don't (I think) have access to the executables or the underlying virtual machine the way you would if you just purchased virtual server time via EC2. You can probably configure it to some extent (like setting a password so only you can use it), but that's it.

For a gamer, that's exactly what you want. Ross isn't primarily concerned with the ability to mod The Secret World. He wants to be able to play it after EA shuts down, even if he has to pay for it. So if EA were compelled to make the machine images to available to AWS, Ross could pay AWS to run some Secret World servers and connect to them. For the single-player experience Ross was describing in his video, I suspect this could easily cost $0.10/hour or less. And that's on AWS, which is notoriously more expensive than its competitors. No doubt any real rule of this kind would require EA to provide these images to all the major cloud providers, and perhaps any cloud provider who had been certified as meeting some level of security for customer data (various standards exist).

Moving on, considering the big question that Ross is asking, it seems to me that a class action lawsuit on behalf of all of the gamers who've had their games shut down is totally feasible. It would be extremely difficult, but good class action lawyers thrive on that sort of difficulty. The main issue for them is usually: is there a huge pile of money in it for me (and also the class I'm suing on behalf of, but mainly me)? It sure seems like there is. This is where the sort of research that Ross & others did for the video is useful, and can be usefully expanded upon.

To start with, you have a list of ~100 games where the buyers presumably had a perpetual license, the game was disabled, and no compensation was provided. For each one of those games, can you determine:

0. How many copies were sold?

1. What channels were used to sell these games? For example, what percentage was sold on Steam, or the Xbox store, or UPlay?

2. Of the sales, what percentage are identifiable? For example, in the event that Valve's lawyer decides that EA owes Ross $30 for the Secret World, he can probably just refund him $30.

3. At what price were the copies sold? Were there different prices? Is there a mean price?

4. What microtransaction content was sold along with the game, and for how much?

5. Are the microtransaction sales identifiable?

And so on. If you know these numbers, you can start adding and multiplying until the quantifiable total-financial-harm-to-consumers becomes, when added to potential penalties for bad conduct (your "treble damages" and the like), irresistible to a sufficiently money-hungry class action lawyer. You also want to roll them up by potential targets. You can't sue "The Games Industry," but you can sue EA or Valve. So you get a figure of total games-related and microtransaction-related harm to consumers inflicted by just EA. Or the total amount from GAAS games sold on Steam. I'm guessing that you'd be suing EA (and the other publishers with large dollar values associated with them), rather than Steam, but who knows? Anyway, once you have all the numbers by game, it's easy enough to aggregate it different ways.

The downside of this is that a good lawyer understands that the legal system does not exist to right wrongs so much as make people pay for their wrongs. He will see the virtue of settling 3 years in for 20% of the total quantifiable harm rather than spending another 7 years to probably get 85% of it. Now being forced to pay 20% plus penalties might be enough for publishers of the world to say to themselves "Shit, let's not try that again," but it might not. At 5%, with minor penalties, it might start to look like the cost of doing business.

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Okay﻿﻿, see now, I'm confused. Wasn't th﻿at the purpose of the DMCA exemption crea﻿ted last year﻿?

First of all, I am not a lawyer, I am a programmer. I can speak of what companies I worked for would or won't do. I am also not even US citizen.

Yet, from the very link you've posted it's imo clear as day that no, it is not.

Not only original proposal was not adapted in full, even it wasn't proposing outright reverse engineering for everyone.

Quote

The new exemption, as with the 2015 exemption, allows both individual users and archival institutions to modify games to remove the need for verification by an external server in order to make games playable again after a verification server has shut down. However, this part of the exemption is still limited to games that don’t depend on any game content stored on an external server.

I.e. it's extension of "cracks are allowed for preservation" case for online only drm. That case does not allow you to reverse the network protocol or the whole game - just enough to shut down the check.

Quote

In addition, the new exemption allows institutions like libraries, archives, and museums to restore a broader group of games, including games that depended on content (such as graphics) that was stored on a server—as long as the institution has a lawfully acquired copy of the server code.

(emphasis mine). Basically museums are allowed to possess game servers of they've been given to them. And only museums. And they can't allow access beyond physical bounds of the institution.

No reverse engineering.

More on that below

Quote

First, the Librarian of Congress did not grant users the right to circumvent TPMs in order to recreate a game’s original server software. The Copyright Office believed this request potentially infringed on game developers’ exclusive right to prepare derivative works because restoring the disconnected servers reflected reconstruction rather than preservation.

Case in point. Recreation is explicitly not allowed as it would be derivative work and not original.

Quote

Second, the Copyright Office did not adopt MADE’s proposal to expand the class of users to affiliate archivists, a group of supervised individuals who would contribute to the preservation cause. Incorporating this proposal into the final rule would have allowed individuals to circumvent video game TPMs in their own homes. The Acting Register was concerned that institutions would be unable to adequately supervise volunteers working remotely. In the short run, archivists won’t be able to tap into this pool of volunteers who could aid in game preservation.

Still limited to museums and their workers.

I think the museum/foundation approach may have some merit though - developers would be a lot more happy to transfer software as is in hands of some established institution, especially if they would be able to take it back if they'll decide to reestablish the game themselves, than just release it into the wild. But from what I read there museums won't be able to provide access to wide public. Nor that would be sustainable.

In non US law I know about - Russian law - reversing is forbidden. Period. No one cares of course - it's Russia after all - you won't be punished for doing so, but as far as law concerned - you aren't allowed to do it.

So as I've said you better pick your battles - this is not the battle you want be part of, imo.

Also, you may want to contact people who work /were working on games you are interested in and ask how much time it will take to make a releasable package. Talk to engineers, not ceos - they may just give you at least a rough estimate, maybe under anonymity. Use journalists if your authority is not enough. Guys like that kotaku editor posting researches on game messups sounds like someone who may get on board and he is quite popular in the industry, a lot of people will talk to him.

Also maybe you want to contact people like that eff for legal advice. After all that's the battle they are fighting for quite a while.

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Yet, from the very link you've posted it's imo clear as day that no, it is not.

Thanks for clearing that up. That law is a little more useless than I thought then. I still need to verify about reverse-engineering being illegal though. For example, emulators have been held up as legal in the USA if they don't use any code from the original, as was established in Sony v. Bleem. If the developer is only providing documentation and turning off encryption, that may not constitute any actual code use, but this is a thornier issue that might need an expert to verify.

So technologically, if we consider a brand new game on a brand new code - it will be half-year in worst case, "free" in best case. A month on average case I think. But again - shooters will be more ok with that, MMOs will be very reluctant, because it will allow others to create similar mmos.

Just wanted to verify, are you saying releasing ONLY compiled code and not any source would create a risk to a company that may have other games sharing some of the same codebase?

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For example﻿, emulators have been held up as legal in the USA if they don't use any code from the original, as was﻿ es﻿tablished in Sony v. Bleem.﻿

In my understanding it's like cracks. Making them is illegal (unless you are a museum and yada yada), but once you have them - use of them for own use is not illegal. Though yeah, it needs some more knowledgeable input.

6 hours ago, Ross Scott said:

are you﻿ saying releasing ONLY compiled code and not any source would create a risk to a company that may have o﻿ther games sharing some of the same codebase?

Most modern mmos are heavily data driven. Meaning you can take that server executable, put different data and boom - you got new mmo. And it will be hard to prove that they are using your server software, unless you start specifically putting some effort in ensuring that.

It's not security risk - at least I don't see any immediate problem in that, - but it's definitely commercial risk, regardless if that server code is shared or not.

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I was actually quite surprised Ross didn't mention that "games as a service" eliminates piracy at the "pros and cons" part. Now I am in no way arguing that setting up your game so that it is dependent on a central server is a sane and ethical way of preventing piracy -even though current regular DRM is extremely weak and gets cracked within days or even hours upon release-, however I think that was another counter argument that you had to answer towards the end. Games as a service is objectively better for the seller when it comes to maintaining profits by eliminating the chance for "cracks" of the game to be made but it is NOT fully defensable since you do breach the deal you made with the buyer by also preventing those who obtained the game legitimately to play it again.

I agree that piracy and cheats should be part of the discussion.
But that's about it
GaaS automatically elimitates neither piracy nor cheating.
Plus, those two arguments are irrelevant when talking about 'de-GaaSing' a game post-mortem.
And why would any accept of unethical or illegal behaviour just because it makes life easier for a company?

Cheats can only be challenged effectively by validating the player's actions. There were cheats in WoW.
Performing the simulation on a trusted platform, however, would help a lot.
But most simulations are to expensive to perform in one place. Scaling is also free when the player provides the computation power. And there's always be the issue of lag.
I'm interested to see how cheating develops with Stadia et al.

Ignoring whether GaaS is effective againt piracy, the right to backup copies and preservation generally trumps copyright protection - at least in Europe.

Let me know what you think.

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Just on reverse engineering - a minor point to throw into the melting pot which I haven't seen/heard mentioned (at least directly) in the discussion so far is the concept of "clean room" reverse engineering. Wikipedia covers this under the term "clean room design", for whatever that's worth.

This is essentially where you observe the behaviour of a piece of software, then write new code from scratch to imitate that behaviour as closely as possible without duplicating any copyrighted aspects.

This approach has been legal under US law since at least the 80's, as far as I'm aware. Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. v. Connectix Corporation (about 20 years ago now) even extended it to include disassembly of actual code in cases where behavioural observation is impossible any other way. Having said that the risks in doing actual disassembly are still much higher regardless.

I've done software reverse engineering professionally for 20 years or thereabouts, but I'm no lawyer... Obviously none of this precludes legal action being taken, but precedent definitely seems to indicate that (done correctly) reverse engineering itself is absolutely legal.

I'd argue that writing a server emulator should be almost inherently "clean" since it's vanishingly unlikely that you'd have access to the game server software in the first place. BUT then you run into the data problem as others have already mentioned. If the server provides non-trivial amounts of (copyright-protected) data to the client then providing a legal set of alternate data might be by far the larger undertaking - if it's even possible in any practical sense.

Edited May 2 by AllTinkermisspelling and phrasing

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In my understanding it's like cracks. Making them is illegal (unless you﻿ are a museum and yada yada), but once you have them - use of them for own use is not illegal. Though yeah, it needs some more knowledgeable input.

I literally brought this question up in a discussion I did yesterday on the topic:

It's a long video though, bottom line is, reverse engineering appears to be completely legal if it doesn't use any copyrighted data without consent. The company can easily give that consent for the "minimum effort" option upon releasing that data on its own terms without compromising its IP ownership in other areas.

So I would like to re-pose my earlier question: As a developer, in your opinion, how long do you estimate it would take to perform the actions listed in one the "minimum effort" options? NOT a full server replacement, NOT a functioning games, JUST what's listed on that slide (releasing packet documentation, disabling encryption, etc.) for an online game that was being shut down? If it makes a difference, you can use the arena game v. MMORPG examples again.

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It depends too much on the game. Some may take a day, some a week, some a whole year, it depends on the tools you get at the beggining mostly, and the layers of annoyance you have to deal with. But I have a very minimal experience with these things, better to ask for more opinions.

It also depends on how the game was created, some games have actual "fake" Offline \ Single Player modes, or Single Player like systems, built in by default (most online games are also detterministic, so that's something you should keep in mind). The Crew has some of these (when you test drive a car, you can pause the game, and maybe the screenshots mode can be used for something).

If you are lucky enough, some games might have built in systems, which makes the process easier, if the game used a popular engine at least (Unreal Engine 3 games are probably pretty safe).

By a day I mean, you remove the launchers (if there's one), or you bypass the authentication system, and you can maybe walk around in the game, if you are lucky enough to have access to the debug commands to load levels, or to a similar system (a configuration file - maybe you replace the main menu with a level, for games which load an actual level in the menu - whatever cheeky exploit you can think off, anything hacky will do).

The bare minimum of playable. Most menus might not even work, most things might not even load. Whatever you are lucky enough to work with. Anything else, it's a guessing game. Every game is extremelly different, some are easier to revive than others though.

Edited May 2 by RaTcHeT302

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If Google's Deepmind can (in a sense) reverse engineer the old game Breakout from looking at how the pixels on the screen behave, maybe it's not inconceivable that some future program can look at how an online game behaves and where and when information is transferred, and will derive a free open source client and server from that, which may use a different low level approach, but will provide close to the same user experience. So if you are willing to accept ANY improvement over the existing situation, the vague notion that things get better in the future (from the user's perspective) might cheer you up.

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Just﻿ on reverse engineering - a minor point to throw into the melting pot which I haven't seen/heard mentioned (at least directly) in the discussion so far is the concept of "clean room" reverse engineering. Wikipedia covers this under the term "clea﻿n room design", for whatever that's worth. ﻿

The thing is - it will be almost practically impossible to clean room reverse a sufficiently complex game protocol. It would take a lot of data to disassemble and there will be lots of trial and error, etc.

I don't see how it's much better than having encryption.

2 hours ago, Ross Scott said:

copyrighted﻿ data without﻿ consent. The﻿﻿ company can easily give that consent for the "minimum effort" option upon releasing that data on its own terms withou﻿﻿t ﻿﻿compromising its IP ownersh﻿ip in other areas.﻿﻿

Of course, if they give you a license to reverse, it's legal to reverse. But they will never do that. It's basically opensourcing a big part of the game and if they use say voip - which is usually third-party - they can't do that as they will be limited by voip software license. Same goes with any game using say unity - they just can't give you permit to do so, as they don't own all rights to all code.

2 hours ago, Ross Scott said:

So I﻿ would like to re-pose my earlier question: As a developer, in your opinion, how long do you estimate it would take to perform the actions listed in one the "mini﻿mum effort" options? NOT a full server replacement, NOT a functioning games, JUST what's listed on that slide (releasing packet documentation, disabling en﻿cryption, etc.) for an online game that was being shut down? If it makes a difference, you can u﻿se the arena game v. MMORPG examples again. ﻿

So yeah, it's basically just protocol docs and if you assume cooperative behavior they can just publish dev build with cheats, console, logs and various debugging features that would make writing the server emulator a lot easier. It won't take any effort from them either, as it's again just developer build.

But I am still not convinced that it may work legally. I know that WG before they bought BigWorld would not be able to allow you reverse engineering, as for half of pre-release development of wows we didn't have full server code and were not allowed to reverse it.

Also it doesn't take "reconstruction, not repair" issue into account, unless you will also demand developers to allow derivative works as part of this minimal effort.

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I watched parts of it, and I 100% believe what GAS does is 100% fraud.

Let's say that I buy a game while it's on sale, I don't install it, and maybe I want to play the game, a month later. One month later, I try to play that game, and oops, sorry, no game for you. I want a refund, no refund, I want the game, there's no game. As a customer, I have the overall expectation, that the game is going to be fully functional, even after one month goes by (and that it'll actually exist, by the time I get to it, if not, give me my money back, you didn't give me the product we agreed on, at the time of purchase, this is not the product I bought, technically).

I don't have the game data, nor the product. Great...

How is it reasonable, for me to assume, that the good which I bought, should be crippled, just randomly, after a while?

It shouldn't be legal. Companies need to be upheld legally for bullshit like this.

Hey, my PlayStation 2 games don't randomly stop existing after two decades. I mean the data is still there, like what the hell?

I actually faced this problem as a kid. I bought NFS Most Wanted, I checked the Online mode out, it was too laggy, so I told to myself, "great, I'll play it later, when I have better internet". Fast forward a little bit, aand the multiplayer mode is completelly crippled.

Okay, I paid for only half of a product? How is this not a complete rip off? When my expectations were exactly set in stone? I saw it, it worked, the whole thing, now it doesn't. Why??? HOW IS THIS LEGAL??? HOW CAN NOBODY FIND ANY REASON TO FIGHT THIS.

There's gotta be a way to get the law to work against this, I'm calling bullshit. There has to be a way. This is unreal.

Time passing by, is not a good reason, for a product, which fucking works, to just break like that.

A DIGITAL PRODUCT OF ALL THINGS, WHICH CAN LITERALLY NOT DECAY, IF PRESERVED PROPERLY

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2. Protocol documentation - depending on how bad the code is it will take from a week to a month to write it. Almost never they will have it outright. The documentation will have mistakes. ﻿

What you're saying here flies in the face of what I was told by other developers. Could you clarify? Look at my post at the bottom of page 2, it specifies exactly what I'm talking about. We're not talking about complete code documentation.

I think there's not as many barriers as you're making out. Here's the thing: as I understand it, (in the USA anyway) the right to reverse engineer IS legal and protected under federal law as long as it's not using copyrighted material.

So say they turn off the DRM + and encryption + release the protocol documentation for "non-commercial and research purposes only, all rights reserved by (name of company)". That language isn't giving explicit permission to reverse engineer, but they don't need to either.

I watched parts of it, and I 100% believe what GAS does is 100% fraud.

It's not fraud under the law though, best I can tell. I agree completely that this shouldn't be legal, but since it is (in the USA), I was looking at it from the perspective of "does this violate any laws?" It looks like no, and while this is still technically a grey area, it's more about subtle definitions rather than seeing any opening to actually challenge this legally.

It's less about "finding a reason" so much as finding a precedent. If there's no precedent to protect preservation under legal terms and the existing laws block any interpretation of enforcing laws that way, then literally the only option is to propose new laws, which requires action through representatives in Congress. If that's the case, then it's like in the video: I see that as almost impossible. We can't even get Congress to get lead out of the water in the USA, I sure wouldn't count on this.

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I find it appalling that, a game like Quake 3, is still fully functional. It set a precedent already, which I find even more bullshit, all parts of the game work 100%. If I wanted to play Quake 3, or Unreal Tournament 2004, I could, right now, even 100 years down the line.

The Crew though? In a decade, that game is only going to be nothing more than just another fading memory. It doesn't have to be this way, and I hate it. Also EULAs hold no value in the EU, best I can tell. And by law your product should work for at least two years (the product you agreed to, with all the features you were promised to have access to, exactly the way it was, when you bought it). Please correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not a law person, I'm mostly going at it from the emotional, moral, logical side of things.

I think there has to be a more agressive angle which can be taken. I just cannot believe, that there's no legal angle, this can be approached at. At least in Europe, there has to be something. Europe is a huge market, it would affect them. Even giants like EA and Ubisoft would be affected, everywhere. Look at what GDPR did, Europe can and has a major impact, we shouldn't understimate their power.

Edited May 2 by RaTcHeT302

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So say they turn off the DRM + and encryption + release the protocol documentation for "non-commercial and research purposes only, all rights reserved by (name of company)". That language isn't giving explicit permission to reverse engineer, but they don't need to either.

There could be a conflict of interest, if there's no proper agreement, with the business partner, or with the publisher, otherwise, should be perfectly legal.

Even for personal use, it should be fine, from what I understood.

For the better approach, they wouldn't turn off the encryption, but they could give you the encryption formula, something like this.

This is from Evil Genius by the way. From the programming side of things, that's what "turning off the encryption" means pretty much, they could give you some pseudo code (fake source code, not real, more math like, like a math formula), in order to make your own decryptor tool.

They wouldn't even need to share the actual source code.

They can totally help us out though. Just throw us a hint or a bone, people can do the rest.

100% Legal. Sorta cheating a bit, but honestly, after your game is a decade old? Yeah nobody is going to care. You can do this yourself eventually anyway, it would just speed up the process if they just told you, what you had to do, nothing more.

It's legal because, you still have to do all the hard work by yourself, technically.

Games have no reason to die, never had. People are just being lazy for no reason. This can be solved, and it should actively be fought.

We should avoid getting to this stage in the first place, but, we are desperate, this would do okay. Not great, but, better than nothing.

Edited May 2 by RaTcHeT302

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@Ross Scott Sorry for the triple posting, I edited my posts out a lot, as I kept coming up with things to add. I hope what I said makes you a bit more optimistic about the future of games, I do honestly believe, that this is a solvable problem, by law, and we do have actual precedents, which have been set beforehand. I'm willing to say, that most arena shooters, can be used as clear examples, and hell, we can use Quake 2, as an example, of the potential human innovation, we would be denying, to the whole world, if we just deleted the game away, which proves that Games as a Service is complete horseshit, and it shows what not killing games, actually does.

But, I think this wouldn't hold in court, sadly. I think we should be optimistic either way. Just gotta keep chipping at it.

We'll end up with no games otherwise.

I don't want the future to be like OnLive. I wasn't very optimistic at first, but I've changed my mind, I think it can be done.